Seb realized that, if his experiences in the last two weeks had never happened, Ewan had said nothing that couldn’t be explained as the result of drug use, mental illness or a combination of the two. ‘The first time?’
‘I was taken to hospital and kept inside for a few days. They ran tests. I was in pretty bad shape and I was diagnosed with epilepsy. I’d had a couple of fits before, but nothing like that one. I thought it was because of what I’d been taking, impure stuff, for years, living rough, you know? But it happened again, in the hospital, on the ward. Maybe I had another fit, but a milder one. I don’t know.
‘I found myself standing beside the bed, looking down at myself. That time it didn’t last long. As soon as I became aware of what I was doing, I fell back, into myself, and I was awake again in a hospital bed, inside this long, dark room. The ward. But it hadn’t been dark when I was standing beside the bed. The room had been filled with light. Beautiful, soft light. I had seen everything inside the room. I only realized later that I had been the light.
‘I knew something special was happening to me. It didn’t make me afraid. Not at all. I couldn’t think about anything else afterwards. It was like that had been a sign. A message. I’d been guided and this was my new purpose, to understand and control a gift. This was something unique that I could do. This was the thing that I had always been looking for. It’s like it found me. There was nothing that I would ever do in my life again that could compare to that experience. I had travelled, truly. My soul had detached from my body.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘2010. Though there were plenty of signs before then that I was right for it. Compatible. I thought poetry was the route for my awakening, music, drugs, a lifestyle, a way of living, of being. Subconsciously I had always been searching for it, without being sure of what “it” was. But nothing compares to this, no other human experience.’
‘You learned to . . . what, harness it?’
Ewan shrugged. ‘Not really. Not for a long time. Not until . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence and reached for the glass to drain the last drops of water. Seb suspected it was a deliberate evasion.
‘I tried. God, did I try. You have no idea how hard. But you gotta let it take you. You don’t decide. You just put yourself by the door and hope that it opens, like Hazzard said. Took me a long time to realize that. And sometimes it would happen when I was sitting down, drifting off, daydreaming. But mostly when I was lying down, before I fell asleep. It can’t be forced. The fit shook something loose, though, a latent, innate gift.’
‘What about the fits? Don’t you need medication? To see a doctor? I mean, it’s pretty bloody serious. Don’t you care about your health?’
Ewan glanced at Seb as if the question was stupid. But within the look was the answer: of course Ewan didn’t care. Why would he care, when he thought he’d found something greater than life itself? Something that he believed would transform his own dull and painful existence.
‘It started to happen without the fits. They weren’t always involved, thank God. I had inhibitors, medicine for my condition. But sometimes, quite randomly, when I was resting, and really tired, I just seemed to step outside of my body. Sometimes as I was going under, falling asleep, I’d feel myself rise up and out. I would open my eyes and be wide awake, fully conscious, but looking down at myself, from the ceiling. I would be floating. I could also wake in the early hours of the morning after a dream and I would sit up, but my body would still be lying down.
‘Around that time, it even happened in a cinema. I was standing beside my seat, about three feet away, in the aisle, and looking at myself sitting down. I had no recollection of even leaving my body. I was just there.
‘I had to go home for a while, after the first fit, after my diagnosis, and I remember my mother came into my room one morning. She had a cup of tea and my medication to make sure that I took it. I remember watching her enter the room and approach the bed. My body was inside that bed. But I was standing in the corner of the room, watching her.
‘As soon as I became aware that it was happening, I would always return to my body, with this jolt. A sickening kind of click or crack and I’d be back inside my body, and feeling weak and tired and disappointed again.